My Name is Red

Orhan Pamuk

The Sultan has commissioned an illustrated book to demonstrate his power
to the Venetian Doge. Because it will employ controversial aspects of
the Frankish style, head illustrator Osman has been bypassed and the
project given to Enishte, who coordinates miniaturists nicknamed Elegant,
Stork, Olive, and Butterfly. But when Elegant suspects the orthodoxy of
the final page and threatens to denounce the project to the followers
of the preacher Nusret Hoja, he is murdered by one of his colleagues.
Enishte's nephew Black, newly returned to Istanbul after twelve years
absence, is asked to investigate. To complicate things, he revives an
old passion for Enishte's daughter Shekure, who is technically still
married to a husband missing in battle, and who has other suitors.

These are just the most prominent of the twenty characters from whose
first-person perspectives My Name is Red is told. We also hear from
Esther, a Jewish pedlar who carries letters between Enishte and Shekure,
Orhan, Shekure's son, and the subjects of the illustrated book —
a dog, a gold coin, a horse, Satan, and so forth — given voice by a
storyteller in a coffeehouse. And the murderer and his victims speak,
the former without revealing his identity and the latter as spirits.

As a mystery and a reworked folktale, My Name is Red has some surprising
twists and turns, powering a readily engaging plot; as a historical
novel, its setting in late sixteenth century Istanbul is convincingly
detailed; and as a novel it offers some memorable characters and
complex relationships. But what is most notable about My Name is Red
is the extent to which it is a novel about art, indeed almost a study
of Islamic illustration. It contains descriptions of paintings, some
of which verge on prose poems. It is full of stories about the great
miniaturists and their history, going back to Bihzad and the Chinese
influences brought by the Mongols. And it is riddled with discussions
and debates about form and style, the relationship of art to morality
and society and religion, the effects of Western ideas, the future of
Ottoman illumination, and the significance of blindness.

This is all interwoven with the plot, the setting, and the characters.
When Black questions the three surviving miniaturists, for example, he
does so by asking them questions about style, to which they respond with
short tales about great miniaturists. Osman and Black spend three nights
in the Sultan's Treasury, searching the collected books for stylistic
clues that will identify the murderer.

"We saw pictures of war and death, each more frightening and more
expertly done than the next: Rüstem together with Shah Mazenderam,
Rüstem attacking Afrasiyab's army; and Rüstem, disguised in
armor, a mysterious and unidentified hero warrior ... In another
album we saw dismembered corpses, daggers drenched in red blood,
sorrowful soldiers in whose eyes the light of death gleamed and
warriors cutting each other down like reeds, as fabled armies,
which we could not name, clashed mercilessly. Master Osman —
for who knows how many thousandth time — looked upon Hüsrev
spying on Shirin bathing in a lake by moonlight, upon the lovers
Leyla and Mejnun fainting as they beheld each other after an
extended separation, and a spirited picture, all aflutter with
birds, trees and flowers, of Salaman and Absal as they fled the
entire world and lived together on an isle of bliss."

And many of the characters view the world as painters, sometimes telling
their stories by describing the illustrations a miniaturist might paint
to accompany them.

"The subsequent illustration, that is, the fourth, ought to
depict the proxy recording the divorce in the ledger, unleashing
obedient armies of black-ink letters, before presenting me with
the document declaring that my Shekure is now a widow and there
is no obstacle to her immediate remarriage."

A map and a historical chronology are provided, covering places and
events that were either important in the history of Islamic art or in
the legends and folktales illustrated. Apart from an elegant cover,
however, My Name is Red has no illustrations — and an extensive
illustrated history of Islamic art would be necessary to do it justice!

It was apparently a hit in Turkey, but it is an unlikely bestseller —
it is slow moving in places and not recommended for those who want a
straightforward historical mystery after the fashion of Ellis Peters or
Lindsey Davis. For anyone either interested in Islamic art or willing
to be drawn into it, however, Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red offers
immersion in a genuinely foreign world, one in which art and history
are fundamental.